The Beach Book Bundle: 3 Novels for Summer Reading: Breathing Lessons, The Alphabet Sisters, Firefly Summer (149 page)

It would be lovely to know enough French to confess to a French priest. By the looks of things you’d get away with murder here.

   “How’s Dara getting on minding the children by the Loire?” Fergus asked.

“It’s the poor French children I worry about,” Kate laughed. “I got a letter from her this morning and she said that she has taught them all to say
pogue mahone
. They think it’s Irish for good morning.”

Fergus laughed. “Knowing the French I’d say they’d be pleased to think their children were being taught anything as racy as kiss my arse. A very lavatorial sense of humor, I always found.”

“Don’t be lofty, you always found. When did you always find? On your five-day trip to Paris ten years ago was it?”

“How many days did
you
spend in Paris, brain box?” he asked.

“No days. And now I’ll never go.”

“Remember we wanted you to go to Lourdes.”

“Yes, but it would have been the wrong thing, Fergus. Lourdes doesn’t mend broken spines. Nothing does. People would have been so disappointed and I would have felt I would have failed them somehow if they saw me in a wheelchair for the rest of my life.”

“I think it’s a load of rubbish,” said Fergus.

“You can’t mean that.” Kate was shocked “Why would Our Lord let people believe it and go there in millions if it wasn’t true?”

“Have you ever considered that Our Lord mightn’t be there?”

“No I have not, and neither have you. This is being said to shock me, like a schoolboy. Of course you believe in God.”

“Well if I do I don’t like him much,” Fergus said. “He’s taken away my housekeeper weeping and wondering where her duty lies. She came to a tearful conclusion, Canon Moran and Father Hogan’s need is greater than mine.”

“I’m delighted,” Kate said. “Best thing for her, for them and for you.”

“Why for me?”

“You’ll have to live like the real world lives now, instead of having everything done for you, being a peter pan with occasional flashes of bold atheism now and then. It will be the making of you.”

“What will I do?” shouted Fergus.

“Find a wife,” Kate said.

“No, seriously what will I do now? Miss Purcell’s going.”

“I’ll get you someone to come in and clean the house. That’s all you need.”

“But the cooking, the washing.”

“I’ll teach you to cook. I’m teaching Grace O’Neill so I might as well have two pupils, and until you find someone who takes in washing properly you can bring it here.”

Kate wrote to Dara about the lessons. She said they were priceless. She said that Grace hadn’t known you could get rashers of bacon cut for you, she thought they started life in plastic wrappings. She said that Michael put half the dough in his hair and on the kitchen walls, and that Fergus was in grave danger of becoming a kitchen bore. He kept saying there was nothing to it, and when were they getting on to something a bit more elaborate?

   The entire Vartin family had taken to saying
pogue mahone
as a greeting each day, and Dara wished mightily that she could be around the first time one of them actually said it to anyone who understood Irish.

As an act of solidarity she decided to tell Madame Vartin what it meant. It was the only gift she could give her, a little superior knowledge. Laboriously she translated it:
Va baiser ma fesse
.

Madame’s face was quite stunned when she heard it, and Dara wondered had she gone too far? But no. Madame Vartin thought this was a nugget of information and hugged it to herself with glee.

“
Pogue mahone
, Stephanie,” she would say to her rival each morning, and she and Dara exchanged winks of delight when nobody was looking.

   Rachel told Patrick that he might need to organize activities for the bad weather. She chose a particularly wet and gloomy day to tell him this so that he could see what she meant.

“Fishermen would be out on a day like this, and golfers never let a little rain get between them and their game,” Patrick said.

“Their wives?” said Rachel.

“They can get their hair fixed, their nails done.”

“Not every day they can’t.”

“What do you think then?”

“Some activities, maybe cooking classes even. How to make traditional Irish fare.”

“Not a bad idea,” Patrick said. “Who would we get to do it?”

“Let’s think nearer the time. There could even be people around here?”

“Hey,” said Patrick suddenly. “Kate Ryan’s done well teaching Grace, and Grace says she’s very funny and has long stories about the ingredients and everything. Do you think she could do it?”

“I don’t know where you get your ideas, Patrick,” Rachel said in admiration.

   Jim Costello, the young manager, had not yet met Kerry, son of the house. Jim had been away finding staff and interviewing applicants when Kerry had come home.

He had not been in Mountfern for the tragedy. He knew the Dalys, of course, and remembered the little girl with the long hair and big eyes as a friend of Grace O’Neill’s. He called to the dairy to sympathize on his return.

He was surprised to see an older girl there. “I don’t think we’ve met,” he said and offered his hand.

“Mountfern is really looking up now that I’m off nursing in Dublin,” Kitty Daly said, eyeing him up with unconcealed pleasure. “You
and
Kerry O’Neill. I must say it’s the place to be.”

“I haven’t met him yet, I hear he’s a matinee idol,” Jim said.

“He’s all of that. He’s like something from another world,” Kitty said.

“Ah well, no chance for the rest of us then.” Jim was courteous, admiring and yet distant. He had come to offer his sympathies, it would be crass to let it turn into flirting. And anyway Jim Costello was much too cautious a young man to become too involved with anyone in a small town. His career was of much greater importance than any dalliance with a local girl, even one as pretty as this tall willowy girl with the beautiful crinkly hair.

As he left he said again that he was so sorry about her sister.

“It’s impossible to believe it happened,” Kitty said bleakly. “This is the first time I’ve been home since, and three times I’ve gone upstairs to call her. And I keep expecting all those friends of hers to come traipsing in looking for her.”

“I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“No, it’s nice to talk a bit. My dad won’t talk about her at all and my mam has more conversations with her in heaven than she ever had when poor Maggie was on earth.” She smiled gratefully as Jim Costello went out the door.

   “Let’s write to Dara,” Grace said.

“You always say that when you want to wriggle out of my arms,” Michael complained.

“Not true. Anyway I’m much better about remembering your poor sister stuck with all those awful screaming children than you are.”

“How can she be learning any French if she keeps writing to us and reading our letters?” Michael grumbled, annoyed to be distracted from his long embraces with the lovely Grace.

But Grace was sitting up and had gotten out the notepad. “Come on, Michael. Stop fooling around … I’ll start. What will I tell her?”

“Don’t tell her about Declan Morrissey getting drunk and asking Mary Donnelly why she was never married. I want to tell her that.”

“That’s not fair, that’s the best part. I can remember nearly all the speech.”

“No, I thought of it, you say something boring about clothes or something first.”

“I don’t write about clothes. Hey, I’ll tell her Kerry’s coming back for a weekend.”

“He’ll probably have told her that himself.”

“I don’t imagine Kerry writes, he’s bad at letters.”

“Well, to Dara he would surely?” Michael thought that it would be very bad of Kerry to be so neglectful.

“Yes, maybe.” Grace was doubtful.

“And I’ll write about Kitty Daly being back.”

“I don’t know.” Grace was still more doubtful.

“Grace, for heaven’s sake, you’re the one who said let’s write; now you don’t want to say anything.”

   Eddie Ryan went into Leonard’s. Tommy looked left and right. His father was busy talking to Mr. Williams. Swiftly Tommy handed Eddie three aniseed balls from a jar.

“Thanks,” Eddie said briefly.

“Don’t eat them here,” Tommy hissed.

Tommy paid Eddie protection money of a sort. He fed him a small amount of sweets that would not be missed from giant jars in order to buy some peace and quiet from Eddie’s gang. Eddie swaggered in most days and the arrangement was sweets of Tommy’s choice, otherwise they all came in together and Tommy’s father got into a temper, ordered them out and told Tommy that the young Ryan boy was an out and out hooligan. Tommy didn’t want any guilt to attach to Dara by association.

He wished that she would write. All he had so far was a picture postcard of some château on the Loire with a list of complaints about the food, and the price of ice cream and the price of stamps.

“Any news of Dara?” he asked Eddie.

“You ask me that every time,” Eddie said.

“And you usually have a smart answer rather than saying yes or no,” Tommy snapped.

“There was a letter this morning, Mam read bits of it at breakfast. What would be in the bits she doesn’t read, do you think?”

“Maybe about how great it is to escape from you, Eddie.”

“If you’re going to be like everyone else then we will drop our deal?” Eddie said with menace.

The thought of Eddie’s gang jostling and pushing and creating havoc in the newsagent’s shop made Tommy Leonard feel faint.

“We’ll go on the way we are,” he said.

“I thought that’s what you’d like,” Eddie Ryan said cheerfully.

Tommy watched him go out of the shop and head for the shop that used to be Meagher’s until Mr. O’Neill had bought it. It was a sort of travel agency and tours office. Surely Eddie wasn’t going to terrorize them and be paid off in excursions by coach to the Ring of Kerry?

Tommy found the days very long, and on his half day he found the hours very long. Twice he had headed off up the street to look for Maggie to come and talk to him. He didn’t dare tell anyone that in case they thought he was going mad or that he hadn’t cared about her death.

Tommy woke a lot with his heart beating thinking of Maggie’s fall.

   Jacinta and Liam had discovered that the cousin wasn’t too bad after all. Her name was Amanda, which was a bit rich for Mountfern, and she loved horses. She had been very disappointed that they didn’t ride, being in the country and everything. In desperation they asked their father if they could ask Miss Johnson to teach them.

Marian had two tame ponies she said, they were practically geriatric she admitted; nobody could come to any harm on them. She bit her lip when she had said that. The raw grief of the children in Mountfern was still in everyone’s minds.

“Why don’t they have the ponies and play with them up in the paddock?” she said to Dr. White. “There’ll be no fees, no lessons, it will take their minds off things.”

“You’re a decent woman, Marian,” Martin White said, and meant it. He used to think that she was a bit uppity and gave herself airs, but he didn’t like her being publicly humiliated by O’Neill either. And it would stop his children from driving him into the asylum on the hill where he had sent so many patients over the years.

Grace saw the activity in the paddock behind the Grange. “Would we be in the way if we joined in?” she asked.

Liam and Jacinta were delighted to see Grace again, at first they were ashamed of Amanda, but Amanda turned out to get on famously with Grace. Like everyone else.

When Marian saw that Patrick’s daughter was interested she brought further and better horses, and a regular little riding school began.

“Come on, Michael. Get a hat, that’s all. She insists we wear hard hats.”

“Don’t be mad, where would I get something like that? It’s like asking me to get a top hat or a bowler.”

“Please, Michael.”

“No. I can borrow yours if I’m going to have a go, which I may not, I haven’t decided yet.” Michael was very disappointed at the turn things were taking.

He had seen a summer ahead of them where he and Grace would sit and talk and fish and hold each other and kiss. He would wander with her, telling her the secrets of his heart as he was starting to do already. He would tell her his plans and hopes for when they were older, and how he would study hard—at accountancy perhaps, he had heard her father say that a man who was trained as an accountant was trained for everything. He would tell her how they would travel together. But Grace wanted to play childish games and walk round in circles sitting on an aged pony.